This invention relates generally to vending apparatus and more particularly to a vending system particularly adapted for a restaurant or retail facility.
While various types of interactive systems are known employing portable data entry devices which communicate with central data processing systems, these systems typically have been implemented for retail inventory replenishment and are accordingly limited for such use. Also, systems are known which include point of sale terminals which replace conventional cash registers for checking out multiple items such as articles in a grocery store or the like. Such systems are used to tally the items purchased and to provide a printed readout of the transaction, while at the same time relaying the necessary information concerned with the particular transaction to a central processor where in addition to inventory control; bookkeeping, payroll, general ledger and other functions are carried out. While these systems perform in the manner intended, they more or less have been limited in flexability and overall systems expediency.
It is an object of the present invention, therefore, to provide an improvement in vending apparatus.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an improved vending system particularly adaptable to being utilized in connection with a facility wherein paging of service personnel is desired.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide an improved vending system for use in a restaurant facility where a portable terminal is utilized for handling customer orders.
These and other objects of the present invention are provided for in accordance with a hand-held portable data entry terminal including, in addition to operator instructional means, a programmable memory containing stored data representative of sales or order items addressable by entry of a product code and which is accessed by means of a keyboard, bar code or OCR pick-up device. The portable terminal interacts with a local and remote data processor through a pollable interface and a bi-directional communications link selectively utilizing, for example, optical RF, audio and inductive energy. An alpha-numeric print out of an order inputted to the hand held terminal by an operator is provided along with other desired transactional information such as arithmetic calculations for purpose of billing. The programmable memory is adapted to be reprogrammed by an external programmer through a direct connection or a bi-directional communications link. Additionally, each terminal includes receiver indicator means for bi-directional paging communications from any number of a plurality of customer stations which contain respective customer operated bi-directional paging communications means of a selected energy type.